Soaked Almond Pesto

To help you stay on track and interested with your healthy/yummy veganism, keep lots of tasty options pre-made in your refrigerator. I try to keep cooked quinoa and brown rice on hand, as well as a homemade salad dressing and a couple sauces and dips.

Pesto is among the most versatile dips you can keep in your fridge. It can be a spread in amazing gourmet sandwiches, a dip for fresh veggies, or a sauce in rice bowls, pizza and pastas. There are a few pesto recipes we have already put on our blog, but it never hurts to have more of them in your vegan pesto arsenal…plus this one’s raw, so if you’re into keeping those enzymes intact…

Ingredients:

1 cup of raw almonds

Juice of 2 limes

Juice of 1/2 a lemon

1 tsp of high quality ground organic sea salt

1 big bag of basil for like 3 of those plastic-container things (boo plastic containers).

2-3 cloves of garlic (depending on who you’ll be sharing this pesto with)

1/4 cup of organic, cold-pressed olive oil

Method:

Soak the almonds in purified water overnight. Rinse them in the morning and ‘pop’ the skins off. Prepare your basil by cutting the stems off and rinsing/drying the leaves. Juice your limes and half lemon…no seeds! Depending on the quality of your food processor, you may want to mince the garlic, but if you have a VitaMix, chopping it will be sufficient.

Put all ingredients in a food processor and blend thoroughly so there’s no chunks (especially sneaky garlic chunks that pack a nasal whollop).

The finished product will be bright green, and so delicious you could eat it with a spoon. But beware of eating too much and doing a yoga class the next day. Garlic sweats anyone?

~The Vegan Project